The following prior art is believed to be the current status of the art:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,332,968 describes an apparatus and method for producing a single color coded composite image from a plurality of multi-parameter magnetic resonance image sets. However, this prior art does not relate to generating multi-colored images.
EP 0 637 387 B1 describes a method and apparatus for color coding a plurality of images obtained at a plurality of pulse sequences. However, in the prior art method the monochrome colors are determined empirically according to an average pixel value of user identified regions of interest and according to required output color of these regions.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,804,384 B2 describes color magnetic resonance imaging using both a magnetic resonance property and a function of the magnetic resonance property. This prior art system only includes determined results from a single pulse sequence.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,145,336 B2 describes a system and method for creating and manipulating one or more color-coded magnetic resonance images. This prior art system does not relate to combining MRI images from different MRI devices taken at different magnetic field intensities. Furthermore it does not deal with the issue of images with varying resolution explicitly.
“Comparison of Fusion Techniques Applied to Preclinical Images: Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform Using Wrapping Technique & Wavelet Transform”, by Y. Kiran Kumar, J. of Theoretical & Applied Information Technology, 2005-2009, JATIT, pp 668-673 describes a method for fusing of registered images. However, the prior art system does not relate to different image resolutions and does not consider fusing MRI images generated by more than one MRI device.
However, the prior art MRI devices and methods for generating high contrast images with high spatial resolution of high signal to noise ratio (SNR) are time consuming and/or require very specific contrast agents. Thus, there is a long felt and hitherto unmet requirement for providing high contrast images with high spatial resolution and high SNR.